Network issues resolved and network storage stabilized; emergency update to GPFS applied
Sep. 20, 2020—9/22 3:05pm: ACCRE’s networked storage (aka DORS) is stabilized. We are working with the hardware vendor to determine why one of the controllers for that subsystem performed a service halt instead of a graceful fail over to the redundant controller. Please submit a helpdesk ticket for any new issues you might experience. 9/22 9:26am: This...
Staff Spotlight: Lindsey Fox
Sep. 2, 2020—Lindsey holds an M.S. in Engineering Science with an emphasis in Geology from the University of Mississippi. She has worked as a GIS Analyst in Vanderbilt’s Civil and Environmental Engineering department and most recently as GIS Coordinator to the campus community through the Vanderbilt Library. Lindsey has actively contributed to research teams investigating topics ranging from transportation to...
Staff Spotlight: Ashley Brammer
Aug. 31, 2020—Ashley is a graduate of Belmont University and has a diverse background in business operations management. Along with her role at ACCRE, Ashley also serves as an Administrative Specialist and Executive Secretary in the Department of Physics & Astronomy. When not working, she loves her animals, sewing dog sweaters, collecting anything vintage, and playing everything...
Increased user demand for ACCRE resources is generating a high volume of support tickets
Aug. 24, 2020—Increased user demand for ACCRE resources is generating a high volume of support tickets. Please bear with us as we work diligently to resolve user issues. You can view current ticket volume here.
Scheduled downtime is now complete
Aug. 3, 2020—Update, 8/27/2020: We have successfully completed all the In Scope upgrades, maintenance items, and testing for this downtime ahead of schedule. Therefore we will restore access to the cluster and helpdesk tonight at 8pm. Details on how to use new functionality provided by SLURM v20 will be posted once we have reviewed our test results....
[Resolved] Configuration setting to be applied Tuesday to resolve GPFS lagginess
Jul. 22, 2020—Update, 7/30/2020: We have identified, and tested, a configuration setting that decreases the time it takes to resolve user and group names by an order of magnitude. According to the vendor we can apply the new configuration without downtime. We plan on performing this configuration update after hours next Tuesday, Aug 4th. This new configuration addresses the...
Kernel issue results in paging
Jul. 14, 2020—Over the last few weeks we have been investigating incidents reported by several groups regarding compute node sluggishness. This was a particularly challenging analysis since the symptoms were not easily correlated. We have determined the root cause to be the behavior of the Linux kernel and we are able to reliably reproduce it using scheduled...
Introducing ACCREx: ACCRE’s Experimental Technologies Program
Jun. 10, 2020—ACCRE has been working to identify and adopt new solutions required by our researchers. The menu of production-level services currently available to PI’s can easily be found in iLab and represent the fundamental HPC resources common to research computing centers. Not too long ago, those types of systems were more than sufficient to satisfy the...
ACCRE contributes over 1.3 million hours of CPU time to COVID-19 research through Open Science Grid
May. 12, 2020—ACCRE has contributed over 1.3 million compute core hours to research on COVID-19 through our involvement in the Open Science Grid, a consortium of over 100 universities and research labs who work together on complex computing jobs. As of October 9, Vanderbilt contributed 263,000 hours in the past 30 days, the 7th most among OSG...
Making summer plans? ACCRE can help
Apr. 28, 2020—We know many of you are working hard to keep up with a fluid situation and are faced with a variety of new challenges. Some of those challenges include how to create opportunities for your staff and students to stay busy and productive despite being off campus. If you are still in the planning process...